


choose your faces wisely

by samchandler1986



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-05-13 03:34:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19242979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samchandler1986/pseuds/samchandler1986
Summary: Crowley and Aziraphale realise what Agnes's final prophecy really means.





	choose your faces wisely

* * *

 

“What did you mean?”

Crowley is looking out of the rain splashed window, at sodium reflections from the wet tarmac and orange light refracting in droplets on the glass. Mind ticking away like always, full of questions. Light didn’t used to bend like that, not in the Beginning. Why build a world on faith and belief and then create physics? Although perhaps that one actually came from Hell, now he’s thinking about it. Yes, if he’d been more on the ball, he’d have made a claim for physics. A system of understanding that needs to reconcile the magnetic poles of Newton and Quantum to explain a universe in which there’s no God? Frustration and blasphemy in equal measure, and that’s before you even _start_ on the maths. Or the sexism.

It never ceases to amuse him, albeit bleakly, how much _better_ humans are at his job than he is.

He turns to look at Aziraphale, sitting beside him on the almost empty bus. Hands neatly folded in his lap and his elbows tucked in; politely occupying as little space as possible. Physically, anyway. The angel is _radiating_ contentment and relief, so much so that he’s actually glowing. Not in a way the humans would ever notice, of course. Mostly he looks like he’s got better lighting than everyone else. Still, this bus to somewhere it shouldn’t be going isn’t entirely empty. _Something_ drew mortals in need of a free ride to London aboard when they stopped at Oxford bus station.

He wonders if Aziraphale even realises, or if these very mundane miracles just sort of happen when he’s happy like this.

“What did I mean about… what?” Crowley says.

“About what Agnes said. About choosing our faces wisely.”

“We-ell.” He lets the words sit between his teeth for a moment, rolling them around his mouth before he speaks. “Do you think either of our sides are going to be… happy about what’s happened?”

The inner glow flickers as Aziraphale’s face clouds. “No. No, I don’t suppose they will be.”

“And my lot tend to go in for something rather sharper than a strongly worded note when it comes to internal disciplinary matters.”

It’s going to be an internal affair, he already knows, because Aziraphale is still very definitely an angel. If helping to avert the Apocalypse was against God’s ineffable Plan he’d surely be zooming down to his own lake of sulphur right about now.

“When it comes to it, some of my side can be. Well, you know. Old fashioned about that sort of thing.”

“Turning people into pillars of salt? Blinding them? Raining unquenchable fire—”

“That sort of thing. Yes.” Aziraphale shuffles his hands, uncomfortable. “Oh dear.”

Crowley’s lip twitches, just a tad amused at this piece of understatement. “We need a plan.”

“You mean like your insurance policy—”

“No,” he says, surprised to find he means it. “I want to _live_. I’m still a demon, angel. I didn’t save the world just because it was a nice thing to do. I like living here. With, uh…” He wants to say _with you_ , but that’s a sure-as-Hellfire way to send Aziraphale spinning off into a different kind of moral anxiety. “With crepes and pears and–and oysters and—”

“Bentleys and immoral music?” Aziraphale smiles.

“Yes. That sort of thing, yes.”

And perhaps the angel feels the same, behind that shy grin. He’ll never know. That’s the real torment of Anthony J Crowley, beyond anything the witless Dukes of Hell could dream. Always to ask and never to know.

Sometimes he dares to believe that he was never the agent of Temptation, just a spirit of Curiosity. There’ll never be any forgiveness for him, but as the world turns and changes, bending like the light; could there be room for a little _growth_ in the space between what is Good and what is Evil? And in that grey a place, perhaps, for Curiosity – which can manifest malign or godly, all depending on the nature of the question. And for Kindness, which can sometimes lead to ill, at least when it’s applied as indiscriminately as Aziraphale does…

“Look,” he says, “I don’t think it was coincidence that you found that last prophecy.”

“No. Me neither. Obviously.” No such thing as coincidence, of course, not when you’re following God’s Plan. They sit in contemplative silence for a while, until Aziraphale’s gaze flickers when the bus takes the M40 exit. “Nearly back home,” he observes. “Your home, anyway.”  

Crowley turns to look out of the window too, catching sight of their reflection in the glass. Their mirrored selves splattered with raindrops; an orange cast to their faces from the glow of the streetlights. Ominously sulphurous—

“Oh,” he says, as the penny drops. “Oh, come _on_.” It can’t be that easy, surely?

“What?” says his angel, still – ironically – unenlightened. “Oh, come on… what?”

“I think I’ve got a plan,” Crowley replies. “But you’re not going to like it.”

* * *

Aziraphale is squirming, caught in the agony of needing to say something nice about Crowley’s flat whilst not _actually_ telling a lie.

“This is very… Well, it’s really…” He stops, catching the demon’s amused gaze. “It’s very _you_ , Crowley.”  

“Thanks. Look, you can sit down. That sofa’s a Marcel Breuer original.”

“No, I— thank you, but I’m perfectly… perfectly comfortable just standing here.” He indicates the hallway door lintel, which he is standing squarely inside, as if he’s expecting an earthquake.

“Right,” Crowley drops into the Wegner armchair opposite. He’s not entirely sure why Aziraphale is so terrified of coming up to his flat whilst being perfectly fine with allowing Crowley inside his bookshop. He has a hazy suspicion it has something to do with not being led into temptation. Or words to that effect. “What about a drink?”

“I couldn’t put you to the trouble.”

“You’re sure? The coffee machine is grinding Hawaiian Kona at the moment.”

“Goodness gracious, is it really?”

It wasn’t, but it is now.

“I’ll fetch you a cup.”

“Oh. Oh dear.”

“Don’t _fuss_. You can drink it in the doorway if you really want to.”

But when he returns with the cafetière the angel is perched on the sofa, albeit with the air of a maiden aunt at a Bacchanalia. “Thank you,” he says primly, as Crowley pours.

“Don’t mention it.”  

Crowley finds himself observing as Aziraphale take his first sip. Over the millennia he’s come to rather _enjoy_ watching the angel react to food and drink. And music, on occasion. Good theatre, too—

“Oh, that is almost heavenly after everything we’ve been through today.”

“Don’t say that! Not in here!”

“Oh, sorry. Didn’t think.”

“That’s _really_ going to upset the Occult energy of the place—”

“I said I was sorry.”

“—spent _years_ cultivating just the right—”

“We really do need to talk about your plan!”

He really is devilishly easy to antagonise. “Yes,” Crowley says, supressing a wry smile. “I suppose we do.” He excavates the charred scrap of paper from his pocket, setting it down on the coffee table between their cups.

“Is it too obvious to assume she means I must adopt a disguise?” Aziraphale says after a moment, unable to keep the hope from his voice.  

“But what disguise could fool another angel? Or another demon for that matter?”

It’s not an extra-sensory thing, not exactly. It’s probably the weight they impress upon reality. All that ethereal energy held under pressure inside a man-shaped carapace. They can always feel one another; in the same way a planet feels the tug of another’s gravity. At least, that’s how it’s been for Crowley. For millennia now.

He takes another sip of coffee, and the thing his ears have been waving in front of his brain for the last two minutes finally sinks in. “Anyway, what do you mean _you_ must adopt a disguise? We both need to, surely?”

“Fyre, though, Crowley. What would a demon have to fear about hellfire?”

It’s a fair point, he’d have to concede. “It still sort of… tickles,” he tries, feebly. “No, look, it _has_ to mean both of us. I mean if any side is going to be more pissed off about this, it’s got to be mine.”

“I’m not so sure, you know. Heaven was pretty convinced they were going to win.”

“I know.” Crowley sighs, but there’s nothing else for it. “Look, I know this sounds odd, but I wonder if she means we should… sort of… swap.”

“Swap? Swap… what?”

“Bodies.”

Taps don’t drip in Crowley’s apartment. Radiators don’t groan. In the silence that balloons he almost wishes they did. Anything to fill the hush that follows his pronouncement. Aziraphale’s face is not so much a picture but a whole art-installation-including-helpful-interpretation-panels of confusion.  

“Swap bodies?” he says at last, words dropping like lead weights into the silence.

“Uh,” Crowley hears himself say. “Yes. ‘Cos you see, I’m hellfire proof and you’re… you’re splashproof.”

Aziraphale blinks.  “You _can’t_ think they’d… Holy Water? Where would they even _obtain_ it?”

“How else could they destroy us?”

 “Oh, surely they don’t want to…” But he can see the angel is losing conviction as he struggles to complete the sentence. More silence follows. “Crowley,” his friend says eventually. “I wonder. Do you have any alcohol in this place?”

* * *

“S’not just about looking like me, though,” Crowley slurs. And it  _is_ a slur now, several glasses into a rather fine bottle of Macallan 1952. “You’re going to have to act like me.”

“And you’re going to have to act like _me_.”

“Oh, that’s easy,” demurs the demon, waving a hand expansively and almost toppling the bottle. “Prim and proper. But _I’ve_ got style and swagger—”

“Prim?”

“Ah… I mean…” But he can’t really lie about this, even if Aziraphale is looking slightly crushed. “You are a bit prim, I would say. Sorry.”

“Oh.” The angel digest this. “I mean, I won’t argue with the proper. But _prim_? Prim is a bit… Well, it suggests I’m no fun.”

Crowley finds his mouth is hanging slightly, contemplating what other word could possibly apply to a being so demure it’s taken more than a literal Apocalypse to convince him to come for a visit. “I didn’t say you’re not fun,” he manages. “We’ve had lots of fun.”

 “I mean, I was there in downtown Bethany in _various_ dens of sin and iniquity—”

“Angel—”

“—and all that business with the woodcuts in 1751—”

“Angel—”

“—never _mind_ working with those midwives from Poplar—”  

“Aziraphale! Will you please stop? I never said you’re not fun. Alright? You’re lots of fun. Tonnes of fun. Oodles. Almost… too much fun to handle.”

“Now you’re just _making_ fun. Of me.”

He opens his mouth to lie again, but finds he can’t, not in the face of Aziraphale’s pout. “Only a little bit.”

“Hmm. Well, I suppose this is all grist to the mill of _my_ character creation.” The angel sighs. “When do you want to do it?”

“I think you should leave here as me. I mean, I should leave here as you, even. Tomorrow morning. What?”

“Nothing! Just, well, a bit soon. Still, I can hardly imagine why putting this off would make it easier. Sober up, do you think?”

Crowley nods, and the Macallan bottle is miraculously refilled. The silence of the flat presses in again, so much so that the demon clicks his fingers to turn on the radio. The reassuring sound of the Shipping Forecast fills the quiet.  

“I’ve never done this kind of thing before,” Aziraphale says, more seriously, over the crisply delivered warning for Kraken in Biscay, Trafalgar and Fitzroy. Reality, it seems, is still settling.

“Me neither.”

“Do you think it will hurt?”

“If it does, I’m sorry.”

“Me too. Well, then.” He squares his shoulders and holds out his hand. “Ready?”

“Ready,” nods Crowley, and he takes the offered hand in his.

For a moment nothing happens. The angel’s palm is soft and warm, essentially human. They’ve never held contact like this before, Crowley suddenly realises. They’re not the hugging type of best friends—

It’s like a static shock, but all over his body, as Aziraphale pours across the bridge between them. Perhaps he finds it easier, having more recently been dis-corporated, or maybe he’s less distracted by the handshake than Crowley is. Not that it matters. It’s out or burst, and Crowley rather likes his mortal form, so he flies in the opposite direction. Like zipping down a radiowave, only this time the background noise isn’t the mindless chattering of frail mortals; it’s the full majesty of a divine being passing in the opposite direction.

Alright, yes, _technically_ Crowley is made of the same stuff. But Falling wasn’t exactly easy on the aether. There’s no getting around the fact he’s corrupted in comparison to his friend; that there’s damage expulsion from Heaven caused beyond a reptile’s eyes and blackened wings.

Besides, even when he _was_ an Angel, Crowley wasn’t exactly in the same league. _Oh, they like to say there’s no hierarchy in Paradise, but that doesn’t exactly explain why Gabriel’s running the show now, does it?_ He still remembers Lucifer’s words, thousands of years later; the way they twisted in his chest and burned in his thoughts, until he found himself screaming through the atmosphere of a virgin world…

Anyway, Aziraphale was guarding Eden when Crowley was a million light years from Earth making gas clouds. You didn’t get near one of the Boss’s Big Projects like that unless you were a pretty big deal. Crowley’s always known that, but it’s another thing entirely to be buffeted in the slipstream of Aziraphale’s raw being, with no anchor point to drag him home—

_That way, Crowley!_

A voice in his ear, giving him direction. One of his ears, anyway. He can’t quite shake the feeling he’s got several of them. And there it is - a place to be, a space to fill. Almost but not _quite_ empty—

And suddenly he is back, sitting on his sofa (which, it must be said, is surprisingly comfortable for a piece of designer furniture). Everything feels almost normal again, expect for the fact he’s looking across at his own face.

“Oh,” says his body. “Well, this _is_ strange.”


End file.
